Gatecrashers

9 years ago

'Lady Kanye' Crashes Oscar Speech

Viewers were puzzled by the odd moment during Sunday’s Oscars ceremony when a red-haired woman in a purple dress interrupted—or as some called it, pulled a Kanye—the acceptance speech of Roger Ross Williams when the film Music by Prudence won for best documentary short. The woman turns out to have been Elinor Burkett, a producer of the film, whose fight with Williams over the film’s director got so bad it led to a lawsuit settled out of court. (She says the movie was her idea, and she wanted to focus on the whole band followed by the film, he wanted to focus on a single person.) Burkett claims Williams had refused to talk to her at other awards events, and that she wanted to go onstage to accept the Oscar, but Williams’s mother blocked her with a cane. Williams countered that Burkett had been removed from the project a year ago, that, though she had seen the band, he had done the work alone. “She pulled a Kanye,” he said. “And it's a shame, because this is such positive, happy film.”